I know it’s a common saying that statistics isn’t intuitive to humans. I’ve read my Taleb. *Intuitively*, I can see why one might need to find the mean (average) of a data set as well as the mode.
But where and why would someone need to find the Median? I’ve never calculated the median of a data set in daily life. On the other hand, I compute the mean of several values multiple times a week sometimes. I don’t calculate Modes that much, but I can see **why** someone would care about the most-occurring value.
Can someone explain the relevance of finding the Median? I’m sure there are plenty of useful applications and I’m just unaware of them.
Thanks in advance!
In: 4
It’s useful for showing the true middle… let’s say you want to know what the midpoint housing cost is in a particular town. Let’s say most homes sell for $300k-$400k but there’s an estate on the edge of town that sold for $10m. Finding the mean would hugely skew home prices and might make it seem that the town is much less affordable than it is. By finding the median, meaning 1/2 sold for less, 1/2 sold for more then you see a more accurate mid-point for home sale price. Same for looking at pay within a company, where a CEO making millions might skew what rank and file workers make, whereas most people want to know rank & file pay.
Latest Answers